This invention relates to surveillance systems and, in particular, to a method and apparatus for configuring the storage of video data in a video surveillance system.
Storing the video data gathered by video surveillance systems has been a challenge because of the large amount of data involved. There are numerous parameters that affect the amount of storage needed to digitally record the video image data from a camera or other video source. For example, some of the parameters associated with a camera that affect storage requirements are frames per second, image size, image quality, recording schedule, and transition point in time from a short term recording rate to a long term recording rate. If a plurality of cameras are to be recorded, the number of adjustable parameters increases dramatically thereby making it difficult for a user to manage the multiple settings while attaining the desired amount of storage time. System configuration at best is inefficient and at worst may result in the user settling for a configuration that is not optimized because the user cannot effectively deal with all the choices that must be made. For example, if the system had sixteen cameras and there were five changeable parameters as described above, then the user would have to enter eighty parameters and hope that the total system storage time was as needed. If the storage time is not as needed, then the problem becomes knowing which one or ones of the 80 parameters needs to be adjusted and how much. In addition, storage time is more sensitive to some parameters than to others. This is an essentially impossible task for the user. Moreover, not using all of the available storage can increase storage costs, and the quality of the video data recorded may be less than the highest possible quality. Accordingly, there has been a need in the industry for an efficient and effective method of configuring a digital recording device, such as a digital video recorder, to store video data from a plurality of sources.